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Rap mogul Suge Knight shot, wounded in nightclub

Gillian Flaccus Associated Press

Posted:
08/24/2014 10:49:56 AM MDT

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FILE - In a Feb. 26, 2003 file photo, rap music mogul Marion "Suge' Knight walks out of the Los Angeles County jail, in Los Angeles. Knight has been injured in an early morning shooting Sunday, Aug. 24, 2014, at a West Hollywood nightclub but is expected to survive. Sgt. C. Tatar, watch commander at the Los Angeles County sheriff department's West Hollywood station, says the 49-year-old Knight and two others were hit at the 1OAK club around 1:30 a.m. Authorities say the club was packed at the time, and they are still seeking a suspect. The other victims were a man and a woman. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Death Row Records founder and rap mogul Marion "Suge" Knight was shot and injured in a packed nightclub early Sunday, but he was expected to survive, a Los Angeles County sheriff's sergeant said.

Knight was one of three club patrons struck by gunfire around 1:30 a.m. at 1OAK on West Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard, said Sgt. C. Tatar, watch commander at the Los Angeles County sheriff's West Hollywood station.

Two other victims, a man and a woman, were taken to the hospital for treatment and were expected to survive.

Authorities are still seeking a suspect and declined to release additional information, citing the ongoing investigation.

The shooting came just hours before MTV's Video Music Awards in Inglewood Sunday evening. R&B singer Chris Brown, who was co-hosting a party at the nightclub with Pia Mia, was also inside the club but not hit by the gunfire, Tatar said.

"This incident did not involve Chris; he was merely the host of the event," the singer's representative said in a statement. "He has and will continue to cooperate with the investigation."

MTV said it had no affiliation or connection to the event. Calls to the club rang unanswered.

Laura Coverson, a spokeswoman for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said she could not confirm reports that Knight was being treated there because of strict medical privacy laws.

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Knight has been shot before. In 2005, he was struck in the leg during an MTV awards pre-party in Miami Beach.

Knight's genius for poaching up-and-coming talent helped him land and make megastars out of Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre and shifted the center of the rap universe to the West Coast in the 1990s.

Knight formed a separate artist management company before co-founding Death Row Records in 1991 with Dr. Dre, who had broken with popular Compton rap group N.W.A.

Dr. Dre's solo debut album, "The Chronic," became one of the most profitable and influential rap albums of the 1990s. It also made a star of Dr. Dre's underling, Snoop Dogg, whose debut album "Doggystyle" was also widely popular.

Knight, however, has been in and out of jail over the past two decades because of parole violations and physical attacks relating to a "rap war" he fueled with East Coast artists.

Financial troubles also eventually lead to Death Row Records filing for bankruptcy.

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